Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Members in this place might remember earlier this year when a Centrelink and Medicare office in my electorate was slated for closure by the coalition government. Senator Catryna Bilyk and I ran a community campaign and had a petition with more than 3,000 signatures, and we managed to get the government to backflip on its decision to close the Centrelink office. What they did was co-locate the Centrelink office with a Service Tasmania office, which is a one-stop shop for state government services. We raised some concerns with the minister at the time and with local Liberal Senators Eric Abetz and David Bushby about the services that would be at this new Service Tasmania co-location with Centrelink and Medicare.

In March I got a letter back from the Minister for Human Services, Alan Tudge, where the minister assured me in writing that the agreement with Service Tasmania 'will result in no change to the service offering for Kingston residents'. Sadly, there has been a change in services—and not for the better. Both my office and Senator Bilyk's office have been overwhelmed with concerned people talking about the lack of privacy in the new centre, talking about their concerns about not being able to get the services that they once accessed at the previous Kingston office, and talking about how they are now being told that they need to travel into Hobart for those services.

What I do not think the minister fully understood at the time is that the Centrelink and Medicare office is the only Medicare office south of Hobart for many thousands of residents, and we are talking about areas where there is not a lot of good public transport. The Centrelink office in Hobart is poorly located and not on a public transport route. It is very difficult for residents from the Huon and Kingborough areas generally to get access to Centrelink and Medicare services in Hobart. We are so concerned about this that Senator Bilyk and I have written to the whole Kingston and Blackmans Bay communities asking them to fill out a survey about their experiences at that new Centrelink and Medicare office.

What we want to do is go back to the minister and remind him of his undertaking, remind him that he said there would be no reduction in services and prove to him that there has indeed been a substantial reduction in services. What this government is doing to people who are relying on Medicare and Centrelink services is not good enough. They should be ashamed of what is happening to this very important public service that so many of our citizens rely on. When they go to the doctor and they need a reimbursement—yes, it is all moving towards being electronic, but there are times when you need a face-to-face interview. There are times when you cannot resolve your issue over the phone or on an app, or the app is down or you have to wait forever in a queue—for several hours sometimes—on the phone to Centrelink and Medicare. Sometimes you need that face-to-face interaction, and the residents in my area of Kingston, Blackmans Bay and down the Huon deserve that service. I am going to keep fighting for them to get it.